Foundation Years and Early Intervention

Amid growing evidence that experiences in their earliest years have a profound effect upon children’s development into adulthood, this briefing examines the government’s plans to reform ‘foundation years’ services alongside a vision for wider reforms around early intervention policies.

Overview

From its earliest days, the coalition government has voiced support for a concerted focus on services for pre-school children and their families, particularly noting that low cost intervention in early years can prevent poor and more costly outcomes for children later in life.

Following extensive research, analysis, and consultation with the sector, the government has recently begun to set out its plans for reforming foundation years services over the coming years. These will overlap with wider government plans to put early intervention strategies in place.

Analysis

Shortly after its election in May 2010 the coalition announced that it would continue with the previous government’s planned expansion of the free entitlement to education for three and four year-olds from 12.5 to 15 hours per week. It also promised to extend the entitlement to the 20 per cent of most disadvantaged two year-olds. In October 2010 the Department of Health (DH) also confirmed that 4,200 new health visitors would be recruited to improve services for families in the immediate period after a child’s birth.

At the same time, in the first three months following the election the government announced three separate reviews encompassing issues relating to the foundation years:

- **Frank Field’s review of poverty and life chances** strongly emphasised the crucial effects of early childhood experiences in reinforcing poverty and suggested government spending on children and young people needed to be rebalanced to invest more heavily in the under fives to make the maximum difference to child outcomes.²
- **Dame Clare Tickell’s review of Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS)** found widespread support from the sector for the learning framework for under 5s

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1 ‘Foundation Years’ is the new government terminology for services formerly collected under the banner of ‘early years and childcare’ or ‘Sure Start’. The government has explicitly indicated that the foundation years will cover pre-birth services and, as such, suggests a more holistic approach to linking health and education services for this age group under the one banner.

2 See also London Councils’ Member Briefing No9: Child Poverty introduced in 2008, but made a number of recommendations to simplify and reform it.

- **Graham Allen MP’s review of Early Intervention** concluded in its first part that services directed at prevention are not only more effective but also save money in the long-term. The second part, published in July 2011, investigated how early intervention projects might be funded locally, including suggestions as to how private money might be incentivised to invest in such programmes. Although the focus of the report takes a broad view across all age-groups, the conclusion that ‘the earlier the intervention, the more effective it is’, means that services in the foundation years are fundamental to its recommendations.

The cumulative message of these reports is that effective and evidence-based interventions in the early years of a child’s life can considerably improve their life chances. The importance of early quality interventions is further supported in Professor Eileen Munro’s review of child protection3 published in May, and in Professor Sir Michael Marmot’s review of health inequalities (2010)4.

Inevitably, however, the most challenging aspects of implementing early intervention will be in its funding. The second part of the Allen review (June 2011) has suggested the establishment of an independent Early Intervention Foundation, led and funded by non-central government sources to help broker investment. Allen calls for government to issue a “bold challenge” to private, charitable and local government sectors that, if they create an independent Early Intervention Foundation, they will be rewarded with co-funding from the centre. He recommends that, once the business case is drawn up, the government put forward £20 million of funding to demonstrate this. So far the government has welcomed the proposal to establish the foundation, but has not yet stated whether it intends to provide match funding.

Various schemes for encouraging private investment in early intervention are considered by the report, including the use of outcome-based early intervention contracts; the establishment of a mechanism of early intervention funds and bonds; and offering incentives to investors through the tax system. The unifying theme is creating a system that employs payment-by-results schemes ensuring investors are rewarded when a project is successful, but also share the cost of failure with the taxpayer.

Allen also urges the government to make early intervention a central objective for the next spending review, expected in 2015, potentially through an incremental migration of funding from ‘late intervention services’ to more preventative programmes.

On 6 July 2011, following the completion of these various reviews, the government set out its plans for reforming early learning and children’s centres. These include:

- A refinement of the EYFS, slimming it down and focusing it more sharply to improve children’s “school readiness”
- Increasing the flexibility of the free entitlement so parents can access their hours between 7am-7pm over a minimum two days (rather than between 8am-6pm over a minimum three days as now)
- A new core purpose for children’s centres with clear outcomes. Parents and communities will be encouraged to become more involved in decision-making and services, and local authorities will be required to publish data on their spending on children’s centres.

Two weeks later the DfE and the DH published a joint document for professionals, *Supporting Families in the Foundation Years*, which provided a more detailed outline of the government’s strategy for reform. It states that the government’s primary aim for the foundation years is “promoting a child’s physical, emotional, cognitive and social development so that all children have a fair chance to succeed at school and in later life.” There are some clear directions for future travel including:

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3 The Munro Review of Child Protection, October 2010 4 The Marmot Review: Fair Society, Healthy Lives, February 2010 • Improved advice and support for families to help with parenting • More effective, evidence-based early intervention for the neediest families – pilots have been launched in children’s centres in nine local authorities across England including two in London – Barking and Dagenham and Croydon • Closer relationships between central government, commissioners and providers (including at a local level) to “provide maximum freedom and flexibility to deploy resources to gain maximum impact.”

The government simultaneously published its vision for parents, which set out what support mothers and fathers can expect from pregnancy until their child reaches five years-old. This included new commitments to:

• Provide mothers and fathers with more choice about how to share their caring responsibilities and more flexible parental leave/options for flexible working • Ensure all new parents are supported in their transition to parenthood in a way that responds to their individual needs. This includes a perceived role for community groups and a pledge to roll-out the Family Nurse Partnership programme for the most vulnerable families5 • Provide all parents with a short summary of their child’s progress at age two, to help identify any additional needs the child may have and ensure the right support can be offered quickly.

Commentary

The principal conclusion to be drawn so far from the government’s policies is that all three major parties now agree on the importance of the foundation years. Given the increase in spending on a state-funded education and care offer for under-fives over the last fifteen years occurred primarily under the previous government, the fact that the coalition has chosen to not only continue but also expand on these policies is significant. Indeed the government has consistently asserted its commitment to supporting the foundation years since it came to power.

Less clear is what balance the government will achieve in its foundation years policies between the benefits to child and the benefits to parents. The blurring of boundaries in distinguishing what is ‘education’ and what is ‘care’ for this age group means that policy in the foundation years can often be subject to competing demands – on the one hand encouraging the best start in life for the child, on the other facilitating affordable childcare to allow parents to access work and escape poverty. This can often create conflicting demands – for example, the government allowing the free entitlement to be claimed up to 7pm may better help a working parent to access a job, but conversely the early evening may not be the best time for a young child to be most amenable to the learning which the entitlement is designed to enable.

This distinction is important as this briefing focuses specifically on the government’s aspirations to give children a solid grounding to ensure the best outcomes later in life. There are other policies being enacted simultaneously, such as reforms to the benefit system, which will also impact on how foundation years services will develop going forward.

The major question around the strategy is how far, in the present economic climate, funding on the ground will allow the rhetoric of central government to be enacted. Local authorities - which administer the free entitlement, Children’s Centres and other bespoke services - are having to make substantial savings and foundation years services are facing sizeable cuts. Several streams of funding for this age group have now been largely rolled into the Early Intervention Grant (EIG). This provides more flexibility for boroughs to make decisions on a local basis, but the cumulative amount for EIG is less than the sum of

5 Family Nurse Partnership is an intensive programme for working with vulnerable families identified by Graham Allen in his report as one of 19 programmes he recommended supporting being expanded in the UK. its former parts, which places considerable pressure on existing services.

The depreciation of resources means that the consultations on school funding (summer 2011), and on identifying which two year-olds should benefit from the extension of the free entitlement (expected in the autumn) will be particularly important for London. London Councils will be arguing that the share of funding made available to London boroughs should reflect the higher levels of deprivation in the capital than in other regions.

It is, at least partially, the potential gap created by the spending cuts that is leading the government towards innovative thinking around how to fund early intervention programmes. However, despite the success of such schemes in areas such as preventing recidivism in young offenders, there are a number of bespoke problems in applying payment-by-results to fund such projects in the foundation years which are yet to be fully resolved:

- Investment must be long-term. Most savings from interventions with the under five age group will not be apparent for many years (through reduced need for negative interventions later in life e.g. in areas such as drugs, prison, and social services). This creates uncertainty over how far investors, from both private and public sector, would be able to commit to spending plans over longer periods.
- The organisation providing the early intervention service will not necessarily be a beneficiary of future savings to pay out in dividend – e.g. local authority investment in parenting programmes may lead to future savings in policing bills but not social services due to factors such as migration trends.
- Clear roles will need to be set out over how different sectors – e.g. health, social services, children’s centres – as well as local and central government would interact in contracting the private sector to fund programmes given the complexity of the relationships between services for the under fives.

Allen himself recognises the political will needed to force through such a radical realignment of thinking that would be expected to encourage early intervention to happen. The key first step is to identify the best way to stimulate initial investment to set programmes running in the face of a lack of engagement from the private sector to date.

The development of a national system of externally-funded early intervention services is therefore likely to be a slow process. However, it is one that could offer innovative local authorities additional routes to secure funding for their area. As such, London Councils has been working closely with Graham Allen’s team, the Association of London Directors of Children’s Services (ALDCS) and other strategic partners such as the Greater London Authority to ensure that London is alert to the possibilities that may be presented for local authorities.

**Author:** Jonathan Rallings, principal policy and project officer, Children and Young People (T: 020 7934 9524)

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**Links:**

- Tickell Review (EYFS)
- Graham Allen Review (Early Intervention)
- Frank Field Review (Poverty and Life Chances)

**This member briefing has been circulated to:**

- Portfolio holders and those members who requested policy briefings in the following categories: Children and Young People